Between Free Trade and Economic Dictatorship: Socialists, Radicals, and the Politics of Economic Liberalism in Argentina, 1930–1943

Abstract

This article explores different arguments regarding economic liberalism developed by the Socialist and Radical parties in Argentina from 1930 to 1943. The analysis of primary and secondary sources shows that both parties voiced strong discourses rooted in economic liberalism as part of their political and ideological attacks against the conservative national administrations of the Concordancia, which were expanding the process of state economic intervention facing the local impact of the Great Depression and World War II. On the other hand, those official discourses masked other positions that were gaining space within both parties, which reconciled state economic intervention and political liberalism—and in some cases, anti-liberalism. Some of these arguments were echoed within the Concordancia and reveal coincidences across party lines. This growing consensus about state economic intervention eventually found expression in anti-Fascist publications and institutions where conservatives, Socialists, and Radicals gathered by the late 1930s and early 1940s.